Observability Overview

How Ultra monitors and records MCP traffic

Ultra provides complete observability over MCP traffic through a pipeline of four interceptors. Every tool call, resource read, and prompt request is automatically traced, logged, audited, and measured.

The Pipeline

Every MCP request passes through Ultra’s observability layers before reaching the upstream server. Responses pass back through the same layers:

Layer	What It Records
Trace	Distributed traces with request/response payloads and duration
Logging	Structured log entries for every request/response
Audit	Security-relevant events with severity, outcome, and principal
Metrics	Request counters, latency histograms, error rates

The audit layer is the only one that will block a successful operation if it can’t record — guaranteeing every completed MCP call has a corresponding audit record. The others absorb errors silently so observability never breaks your workflow.

Where Data Lives

Observability data is stored locally on your gateway by default. Trace records, audit events, and metrics all live on-device unless you enable Hub sync or OTLP export.

Viewing Data

# Web dashboard
ultra dashboard

# Dashboard on custom port
ultra dashboard --address :9090

Hub Sync

When connected to Ultra Hub, traces and audit events are automatically synced to the cloud for team-wide visibility. Local storage is always maintained regardless of Hub connectivity.

What Gets Recorded

MCP Operations

Operation Type	Triggered By
tool_call	AI agent calls an MCP tool
resource_read	AI agent reads an MCP resource
prompt_get	AI agent retrieves an MCP prompt
tool_list	Client lists available tools
resource_list	Client lists available resources
prompt_list	Client lists available prompts

For Every Operation

• Trace ID and Span ID — OpenTelemetry-compatible identifiers for distributed tracing
• Upstream server — Which server handled the request
• Tool/resource/prompt name — What was called
• Request payload — The arguments sent
• Response payload — The result returned
• Duration — How long the operation took
• Status — Success or error
• User — User identity (when connected to Ultra Hub)
• Principal — The MCP client identity

Next Steps

Traces

Understand trace record structure

Audit Log

Security audit events

Dashboard

View data in the web dashboard

OTLP Export

Export to Jaeger, Grafana, or Datadog